2027 NFL Draft No. 1 Pick Odds: Arch Manning Leads Kalshi
Arch Manning is the favorite to be the No. 1 pick in the 2027 NFL Draft, and on Kalshi he trades around 29 to 30 cents. That is the number everyone quotes. It is also not his chance of going first. Kalshi’s 20-player board adds up to 106 cents rather than 100, so once you strip out that margin, the market is really giving the Texas quarterback about a 27.8% shot. The rest of the board is tighter than the headline suggests, and one of the four names closest to him is missing from almost every article written on this market.
Every price here comes from our own pull of Kalshi’s public market data on the morning of August 27, 2026, two days before college football’s Week 0 and two weeks before the NFL opens on September 9, 2026. No 2026 games have been played at either level, so this is the last clean look at the board before results start moving it.
Who Is Favored to Be the No. 1 Pick in the 2027 NFL Draft?
Arch Manning leads at 29.5 cents, which normalizes to a 27.8% market-implied chance. Oregon’s Dante Moore is second at 17 cents (16.0%), and then three names bunch together: Notre Dame’s CJ Carr at 13.5 cents (12.7%), Miami’s Darian Mensah at 12.5 cents (11.8%), and Ohio State receiver Jeremiah Smith at 9 cents (8.5%). Here is the top of the board.
| Player | Pos | School | Price | Market Chance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arch Manning | QB | Texas | 29.5¢ | 27.8% |
| Dante Moore | QB | Oregon | 17.0¢ | 16.0% |
| CJ Carr | QB | Notre Dame | 13.5¢ | 12.7% |
| Darian Mensah | QB | Miami | 12.5¢ | 11.8% |
| Jeremiah Smith | WR | Ohio State | 9.0¢ | 8.5% |
Kalshi event KXNFLDRAFTPICK-27-1, pulled from the exchange’s public market data at 12:50 UTC on August 27, 2026. Price is the midpoint of the bid and ask. Market Chance renormalizes all 20 legs so they sum to 100%. Prices move; check the live board before trading.
Below those five the board thins out quickly. LaNorris Sellers and Drew Mestemaker sit at 3.5 cents, Julian Sayin and Dylan Stewart at 3 cents, and eleven more names trade at two and a half cents or less. That shape tells you something on its own: traders have settled on a small group and have not yet found a reason to look past it.
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Why 30 Cents Is Not a 30% Chance
Add up the midpoint of all 20 players on this board and you get 106 cents, not 100. Those extra six cents are the spread the market makes on a two-sided book, and they inflate every single name. A price is what a contract costs. A probability is what you get after you divide the whole board back down to 100. On the team market further down this page the gap is even wider, at 109 cents. If you are new to how these contracts settle, start with our guide to what prediction markets are and how they work.
Why Is Arch Manning the Favorite?
Because he is a genuinely good quarterback prospect with the highest ceiling in the class, and the name is a bonus rather than the reason. In his first year as Texas’s full-time starter in 2025, Manning threw for 3,163 yards with 26 touchdowns against 7 interceptions and added 399 rushing yards and 10 rushing scores. Texas finished 10-3 and beat Michigan in the Citrus Bowl. No team spends the top pick in the draft on a marketing exercise, so the price is telling you evaluators like the player.
The case against him is in the same stat line. Manning completed 61.4% of his throws in 2025, which is the lowest completion rate of the three quarterbacks directly behind him on this board. He was excellent down the stretch and shaky early, and accuracy is the single thing scouts will be watching in 2026. He also has the best combination of size, arm strength and mobility in the group, which is why the market forgives the inconsistency at this stage.
What Manning has that the others do not is a floor built on attention. He will play the most televised schedule of anyone in this conversation, and every throw gets graded in public. That cuts both ways, and it is the reason his price can move faster than anyone else’s this fall.
Is Arch Manning Worth 30 Cents?
At the current 30-cent ask, $100 buys roughly 333 contracts, and each one settles at $1 if Manning goes first. So the position returns about $333 in total, a profit of around $233 before Kalshi’s trading fees come out of it. That is a little better than tripling your stake, not the double the raw price might suggest at a glance.
Whether that is a fair number depends on how much of the 2026 season you think is already priced in. The market says 27.8%. If you think Manning’s real chance is meaningfully higher than that, the price is attractive. If you think a 20-month-out favorite at under 30% is roughly correct, then you are being asked to tie money up until May 2027 for a modest return on a bet that can go wrong in a dozen ways, including ways that have nothing to do with him. That is the honest trade, and it is a matter of preference rather than a right answer.
Who Else Could Be the No. 1 Pick in the 2027 NFL Draft?
Four players carry a market chance above 8%: Dante Moore, CJ Carr, Darian Mensah and Jeremiah Smith. Three of them are quarterbacks with a legitimate statistical argument over Manning right now, which is the part the favorite’s price obscures.
Dante Moore, QB, Oregon (17 Cents)
Moore was the most accurate quarterback in this group last season, and by price he is the closest thing to a live challenger. He completed 71.8% of his passes for 3,565 yards with 30 touchdowns and 10 interceptions in 2025, ranking 15th nationally in QBR. His 30 touchdown passes tied for sixth in the country.
He is also the one prospect here who has already been through a career reset. Moore started as a true freshman at UCLA in 2023, completed 53.5% of his throws, transferred, sat a year, and came back as one of the best passers in college football. Scouts tend to like that arc. The awkward part of his case is on the board rather than the field: he outplayed Manning statistically in 2025 and still trades at less than two thirds of Manning’s price.
CJ Carr, QB, Notre Dame (13.5 Cents)
Carr has the cleanest efficiency profile of any quarterback on the board and the least mileage. As a redshirt freshman in 2025 he started all 12 games and completed 66.6% of his throws for 2,741 yards, 24 touchdowns and 6 interceptions, with a 168.1 passer rating that ranked eighth nationally. He threw a touchdown pass in every game he started, the longest such streak by a Notre Dame quarterback since 2014.
What he lacks is Manning’s mobility and the year of extra reps Moore has. A redshirt freshman posting a top-10 passer rating is a strong signal, but it is one season, and the sample is smaller than the two names above him. A second year at that efficiency with more volume is exactly the profile that moves a price from 13 cents to the top of the board.
Darian Mensah, QB, Miami (12.5 Cents)
Mensah is the name most coverage of this market leaves out, and on raw production he has the best 2025 season of anyone in the group. Playing for Duke, he started all 14 games and completed 334 of 500 passes (66.8%) for 3,973 yards with 34 touchdowns and 6 interceptions. He led the ACC in both passing yards and passing touchdowns, won MVP of the ACC Championship Game and the Sun Bowl, and was named the conference’s newcomer of the year.
He is a Miami Hurricane in 2026 after a contested transfer that ended in a settlement with Duke over his NIL contract. That matters for this market in a specific way: Miami plays a bigger schedule with more national windows than Duke did, so the gap between his production and his profile should close on its own. Bleacher Report’s early 2027 mock already has him going first overall, ahead of Manning. At 12.5 cents he is the clearest example of a player the board has not caught up to.
Jeremiah Smith, WR, Ohio State (9 Cents)
Smith is the best non-quarterback prospect in years and still faces 30 years of draft history working against him. No wide receiver has gone first overall since Keyshawn Johnson in 1996. That is the whole bear case, and it is a good one.
The bull case is that he is not a normal receiver prospect. Smith set the FBS freshman receiving record in 2024 on a national championship team, then went for 87 catches and 1,243 yards in 2025 as a unanimous All-American. He turns 21 in November 2026 and enters this season as a junior.
| Season | Catches | Receiving Yards | Touchdowns |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 76 | 1,315 | 15 |
| 2025 | 87 | 1,243 | 12 |
Jeremiah Smith’s college receiving production at Ohio State, per ESPN season statistics.
The realistic path to 9 cents paying out runs through the team holding the pick rather than through Smith himself. It needs a franchise that is already settled at quarterback to end up with the worst record in the league, which is an unusual combination. Tennessee took Cam Ward first overall in 2025, so a Titans team back at the top with Ward still under contract is the kind of scenario that puts a receiver in play.
Which Team Will Have the No. 1 Pick in the 2027 NFL Draft?
Arizona leads Kalshi’s team market at 23.5 cents, a 21.6% market-implied chance once the board is normalized, with Miami at 21 cents and the Jets at 16.5. That board runs 32 legs deep and sums to 109 cents, so the margin here is even fatter than on the player side and the raw prices overstate every team by more.
| Team | Price | Market Chance |
|---|---|---|
| Arizona Cardinals | 23.5¢ | 21.6% |
| Miami Dolphins | 21.0¢ | 19.3% |
| New York Jets | 16.5¢ | 15.1% |
| Cleveland Browns | 11.0¢ | 10.1% |
| Atlanta Falcons | 4.0¢ | 3.7% |
| Carolina / Tennessee / Las Vegas | 3.5¢ | 3.2% |
Kalshi event KXNFLDRAFT1ST-27, pulled at 12:50 UTC on August 27, 2026. Price is the bid-ask midpoint; Market Chance renormalizes all 32 teams to 100%. The remaining 24 teams trade at 2.5 cents or less.
Arizona is the leg worth arguing with. The Cardinals went 3-14 last season and picked third overall in April, which is why they sit on top of this board, but they have since spent an offseason fixing it. They hired Rams offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur as head coach on a five-year deal, used the No. 3 overall pick on Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love, and get a healthy Marvin Harrison Jr. back. A roster that bad usually improves, and the teams that pick first are rarely the ones everyone expected in August.
Cleveland is the leg the price undersells. The Browns have named Deshaun Watson their Week 1 starter over Shedeur Sanders, and Watson has not played a snap since the middle of the 2024 season while recovering from consecutive Achilles injuries. At the 13-cent ask, $100 returns roughly $769 if Cleveland ends up with the worst record. That is a real payout on a scenario that requires nothing exotic. We track how these numbers move all season on our NFL futures tracker.
How the Team With the Pick Changes the Manning Math
A Manning contract is really two bets stacked on top of each other: that he is the top prospect in April 2027, and that the team on the clock actually wants a quarterback. Those are separate questions, and the second one is entirely outside his control.
History is on his side. A quarterback went first in each of the last two drafts, Cam Ward in 2025 and Fernando Mendoza in 2026, because the teams picking there are usually picking there for quarterback reasons. But look at the top of the team board and the wrinkle shows up fast. Cleveland just committed to Watson for a season. Arizona spent its last premium pick on a running back. Any of those teams could reach April 2027 with the top selection and a reason to take somebody other than the best passer available, and a Manning contract loses on that outcome even if he is the best player in the class.
What Could Move the 2027 No. 1 Pick Market?
Five things, and the first live input arrives on August 29, 2026 when college football’s Week 0 kicks off. Until then every number on this page is an opinion formed without a single 2026 snap of evidence.
- Manning’s accuracy. He completed 61.4% of his throws in 2025. A jump into the high 60s makes him an overwhelming favorite. Another year in the low 60s invites every argument being made against him.
- Mensah’s platform change. He was the most productive passer in this group at Duke. Doing it at Miami, in bigger windows, closes the gap between his numbers and his price faster than anything else on this list.
- Moore’s follow-up. A second season near 70% completions with Oregon in the playoff race would make it hard to keep him at two thirds of Manning’s number.
- Carr’s volume. His efficiency is already elite on a small sample. More attempts at the same rate is the whole case.
- The NFL standings. This is the input people underrate. Which franchise ends up on the clock decides whether a quarterback goes first at all, and that question does not resolve until January 2027.
Worth adding a sixth: somebody not currently on this board. The 2027 class is 20 months from being drafted, and boards this far out have a poor record of naming the eventual No. 1 pick. Eleven names on Kalshi’s list trade at two and a half cents or less precisely because the market knows that.
Our 2027 NFL Draft No. 1 Pick Prediction
Arch Manning is the right favorite, and 27.8% is a defensible price for him. He has the best physical toolkit in the class, the biggest stage, and the position that goes first almost every year. If you want the most likely single outcome, that is it, and waiting for him to prove it in September means paying a lot more for the same contract.
The more interesting number on the board is Darian Mensah at 12.5 cents. He outproduced Manning, Moore and Carr in 2025, he moved to a program that will put him in front of a far bigger audience, and he is priced fifth on a board where most coverage does not mention him at all. That is usually where a market is slowest to update.
One thing to keep in mind before acting on any of this: these are long-dated contracts on a market that will not settle until May 2027, and the board we pulled is thin this far out, which means the spread you actually trade against may be wider than the midpoints quoted here. Prices this early are opinions, not information. For a wider look at how these markets price sport, see our breakdown of sports prediction markets. Availability varies by state, and our state-by-state guide tracks where these contracts are offered.
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2027 NFL Draft No. 1 Pick FAQ
The questions readers ask most about this market, answered with the board as it stood on August 27, 2026.
Who is favored to be the No. 1 pick in the 2027 NFL Draft?
Arch Manning is the favorite. The Texas quarterback trades around 29 to 30 cents on Kalshi, which works out to a 27.8% chance once the whole 20-player board is normalized to 100%. Oregon’s Dante Moore is second at 16.0%.
Does a 30-cent contract mean Arch Manning has a 30% chance?
No, and this trips up a lot of people. Kalshi’s 2027 No. 1 pick board sums to 106 cents rather than 100, because the exchange’s spread is baked into every leg. Divide the board back down to 100 and Manning’s real market-implied chance is 27.8%. The same correction applies to every other name on the board.
Who are the top quarterbacks in the 2027 NFL Draft class?
Arch Manning of Texas, Dante Moore of Oregon, CJ Carr of Notre Dame and Darian Mensah of Miami are the four quarterbacks the market takes seriously right now. Mensah was actually the most productive of the group in 2025, throwing for 3,973 yards and 34 touchdowns at Duke before transferring.
Which team is projected to have the first pick in the 2027 NFL Draft?
The Arizona Cardinals lead Kalshi’s team market at 23.5 cents, a 21.6% chance after normalizing. Miami is next at 19.3%, the Jets at 15.1% and Cleveland at 10.1%. That board is 109 cents deep, so the raw prices overstate every team by a wider margin than the player board does.
Could a wide receiver like Jeremiah Smith go No. 1 overall?
It is possible but historically unlikely. No wide receiver has been drafted first overall since Keyshawn Johnson in 1996. Smith trades at 9 cents, and the path to that paying out probably needs a team that is already settled at quarterback to finish with the worst record in the league.
When is the 2027 NFL Draft?
The 2027 NFL Draft runs Thursday, April 29 through Saturday, May 1, 2027 in Washington, D.C. The NFL is staging it across the National Mall, with the draft theater set up in front of the Capitol. That means these contracts will not settle for roughly 20 months.
